PLAY IT SAFE
Friendship Quiz Questions You Should Never Share Online
First pet, childhood street, birthday: these quiz questions look a lot like security questions. Which ones to avoid and how to play safely.
“What was the name of your first pet?” “What street did you grow up on?” These questions look harmless in a quiz between friends. But they’re also security questions used to recover online accounts, and handy clues for guessing passwords. Here are the questions you should never post, the ones that are perfectly fine, and the right habits to have before you send a quiz link.
Why some questions are a problem
For years, many online services asked you to pick a “security question” to recover your account: your mother’s maiden name, the city you were born in, your first pet, your first school. Some still do. If you post those answers in a quiz shared on social media, you make them easy to find.
The same logic applies to passwords. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) advises against creating passwords from significant dates, like your birthday or a loved one’s, from your favorite sports team, or from family and pet names, and points out that most of these details can be found on your social media profile. Those happen to be the favorite topics of “Who knows me best?” quizzes.
Questions you should never post
| Question | Why to avoid it |
|---|---|
| Your full date of birth | A common identifier, useful for identity theft. |
| Your mother’s maiden name | A classic account recovery question. |
| The name of your first pet | A frequent security question, often used in passwords too. |
| The city you were born in, the street you grew up on | Security questions and clues to where you live. |
| Your first school, your first teacher | Frequent security questions. |
| Your first car, your license plate | Security questions and identifying information. |
| Your address, your phone number, your building’s door code | Contact details and a way into your home. |
| Where and when you’re going on vacation | Tells people your home will be empty. |
| Your health, religion, political views, salary | Sensitive information, with no place in a game. |
None of these questions adds anything to the fun. A friendship quiz is more entertaining when it’s about tastes and reactions than about what’s on your birth certificate. CISA, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, gives the same advice for social media in general: keep specific information about yourself private, such as your full name, address, birthday and even vacation plans.
Questions that are safe to ask
The best quiz questions have two qualities: they say a lot about someone’s personality, and they’re useless to a hacker. For example:
- current favorites: “My ideal pizza?” “My kind of vacation?”
- reactions: “What do I do when I miss my bus?”
- imaginary situations: “If I were a superhero, my power would be…”
- everyday habits: “Do I put my shoes away or leave them by the door?”
That’s the approach Who Knows Me? takes: the sixty questions in the six sets are all about everyday preferences, with no dates, no places and no names of loved ones.
Watch out for quizzes that want access to your account
On social media, some games and quizzes come as apps connected to your account. Before you tap “Allow,” look closely at the permissions they ask for: once you grant them, an app can sometimes see your profile information, your friends list, your posts or even your private messages. A quiz between friends doesn’t need any connection to a social network. If you’re asked to give access to your account just to see your score, walk away.
Before you send a quiz link
- Use a nickname. A first name or a nickname is enough; there’s no need to give your full name.
- Assume the link can travel. CISA reminds social media users that there is no “delete” button on the internet: even if you delete a post seconds after sharing it, chances are someone already saw it. A quiz link forwarded by a friend can end up in front of strangers.
- Reread your answers before posting. If one of them would bother you on a stranger’s screen, change the question. When in doubt, leave it out.
- Keep the option to delete. On Who Knows Me?, the creator gets a private settings link that deletes the quiz and all its entries; if they do nothing, everything expires after thirty days. The details are on the privacy page.
- Respect the other players. Don’t post a screenshot of the leaderboard with your friends’ nicknames without asking them first.
What Who Knows Me? asks for, and what it doesn’t
To create a quiz: a nickname of up to 24 characters and ten answers picked from the options. To play: a nickname and your ten answers. The game never asks for an email address, a phone number or a social media login. Anyone with the link can see the creator’s nickname and the leaderboard; each player sees the right answers after their own attempt. The How to play page sums up what becomes visible at each step.
If you’ve already answered this kind of quiz
Don’t panic. Start by checking your important accounts (email, bank, social media): if any of them still uses a security question whose answer has been shared, change it, or pick an answer nobody could guess and store it in a password manager. Use a different password for each service, and turn on 2-step verification: the NCSC recommends it for your most important accounts, such as email, banking and social media, because it helps keep criminals out even if they know your password. Finally, go back through your profiles and delete old quiz posts that contained those answers.
To play worry-free, grab ideas from the 40 questions to ask your best friend or from the family quiz, which steer clear of these traps. And if you write your own questions, keep in mind the rules for writing good quiz questions.